A Navy F-18 fighter just went down smack in the middle of a Virginia Beach apartment complex, demolishing buildings and leaving others ablaze after multiple explosions—the jet itself is an enormous flaming heap of jet wreckage.
WAVY-TV reports “the Navy told WAVY.com the plane was an F18 Strike fighter squadron 106,” and is clearly still ablaze from on the ground images. No word on whether any pilot was injured (or dead), but there are already reports of injured pedestrians. No word on what caused the plane, which costs tens of millions of dollars to go down, but it somehow managed to avoid hitting a minigolf course and water park, though nearby residences may not have been spared. CNN relays one particularly awful detail:
Another witness, Zack Zapatero, said the plane crashed into a building occupied by senior citizens. He took photos of the scene. “There’s these large fire balls coming up,” Zapatero said. “I was told there was a bunch of senior citizens that live in that building, which worries me a lot. “Buildings were starting to collapse,” he said of the wreckage scene.
[WAVY-TV]